News emerged today that government plans for a compulsory UK national ID card pilot scheme in the airline industry are deadlocked by industrial and union opposition, casting a blight over the unveiling of the cards' design.
The Financial Times reports this morning that the government's intended rollout of the biometric ID cards …

I'd like to say...

...that the ID card scheme is a solution looking for a problem, but it isn't even that - it's nothing more than some half-assed scheme cobbled together by some smarmy politicians who seem hell-bent on thinking that intrusive technology everywhere will somehow solve loads of problems. Fraud? This system will be ripe with it. Terrorism? Previous terrorists had legit documentation anyway, and besides, the way they're pushing this is likely to incite people to get involved with malicious monkey business, not prevent it.

Excellent news

Stands to reason

I should hope so

This isn't about security, it's about control, and the test of: 'Would Hitler have done this' is passed all too easily.

As I have been a UK citizen all my life I have many ways of proving who I am, that I live where I do and I pay my taxes.

Do we really want the Police (or indeed anyone else) demanding to see our papers at any excuse ? (or none at all) since if the ID cards are allowed to go ahead it won't take long for that to happen (in the interests of our own safety of course).

@breakfast

Thumbs up

Thumbs up to the airport guys, NuLabour are slowly working there way down the list of people they can shove (deploy) these to, next it'll be teachers, once the teachers have said no i'm sorry but it'll end up being shoved out to the armed forces, sorry guys you work for 'em you can't say no.

Get it in your heads

It's not your boss Gordon I hate (although actually I do as well)

It's all of you b#####d labour politicians and the entire diseased government you have created

Gordo couldn't have got through the ID card, 10p tax removal, the extra police powers, the 48 days without trial. He couldn't have killed off habeus corpus without you and Tony couldn't have got us into an illegal war against the wishes of the population without you bunch of sycophantic fucks

You have presided through a regime who have happily smashed our civil liberties to pieces, cost us a small bloody fortune in pointless superGov IT projects that meet no end, and sent Britain’s proud army on shameful missions, smashing them to pieces in the process

Whinge all you want about how misunderstood your glorious leader is and replace him with the dinner lady for all I care

I voted for you, I'm sorry (to everyone else), it'll not happen again

Take your ID card and shove it in the sunshine (up Gordon’s arse apparently having listened to you lot the last few days)

*votes conservative*

As a Johnny Foreigner*...

They can bollocks. Issuing them to foreign residents before anyone else? I'm pretty sure that's got to break some sort of bullshit discrimination law, there's enough of 'em about. In fact, as a member of the CoFSM, I'm pretty sure that it's against my religious beliefs to be tagged like this, and forcing me to do so is incitement to religious hatred. Or something.

(I wonder if the Jewish communities are looking into the details? I reckon they've probably got a pretty decent chance of saying "fuck right off" based on history... and they have a lot of lawyers...)

(*No, I didn't get a council flat after being arrested by the British Navy...)

(untitled)

Dodgy Goings on at ThiefRow....

Looks like the huge number of illegal aliens working in the airport industry are safe for now.

As when the ID cards are brought in (and about time too) you will see the same thing happen as occured in Lambeth with the traffic wardens all being properly screened(40+ disappeared overnight, as they were all illegal aliens with dodgy job details).

The airline industry/Union is scared shitless that the day the cards come in, a large proportion of thier workforce will simply vanish, not to mention the immigration police will be run ragged around the Hounslow area nicking all the aliens that are flagged up.

The Unions will be stuffed as they cannot support or represent illegals and there will suddenly be a major recruitment drive by the ground support recruitment agencys.

Maybe they should do the Recruitment drive and get a nice good long short-list before they start processing the ground staff, so they can be replaced without disruption.

As a side note it may well put a end to the world renouwned reputation for Thief-Row.

And for all those liberal panseys out there harping on about ID cards and civil rights, the rest of Europe has had cards since WW1. nothing wrong with them, so long as the data is protected from outside manipulation and there is multiple layers of paper trail for the setting up of the users identity so that if anything did occur, it could be traced back and corrected.

The only ones with anything to hide are the CRIMINALS, so if your not a criminal there is no problem. The sooner controls are brought in like in Todays! GERMANY the better, the crime rate will fall and those deserving of having thier collar felt by the boys in BLUE will find they are heading to new accomodation provided by HMG or will be flying back to thier country of Origin.

So does that make the noisy protestors against the UK ID card members of a organised crime syndicate??????

Looks like the sooner it comes in the better then, and we can get these scumbags caught and put away.

Mines the one in brilliant Orange with tha blurred numbers on the back...

If you are in London on the 5th November ...

Re: Oh, they're on their way

Provided the airline industry stands firm, the government will have to back down. The alternative is that they'd have to sack all the people who work in airports (including flight crew) and find others willing to accept ID cards and take their place, then provide training for all these people. Can't quite see it happening, you'd end up with a less secure system that way and vastly inflate the cost.

if the system says you're someone else

i understand very clearly that this system will do exactly the opposite of protecting my identity.

if implemented, it would make it far easier for those underbelly id snatching fraudsters to steal my and your ID and become anyone they please.. if they have an exact clone (and it most surley can and would be done) they could become you...

and what's worse is that if someone gained access to the central database they could even swap some (or all) your 'details' with theirs or anyones... and make you into someone else..

imagine what could happen to your life if the system says you're someone else?

how easy would it be to prove to just about everyone that you are who you are if someone out there is saying that they are you?

What is the real strategy of the government?

So the government want to impose the use of the ID cards on the airline industry, well, that's ok for British citizens: we'll be forced to have one, but what about everyone else that passes through the UK ? They're not going to be able to force foreign nationals and foreign governments to adopt our 'airline' ID cards are they?

Seems to me one of the biggest security risks is Pakistani nationals travelling to the UK, it won't do anything to stop that security risk.

I don't understand what the British Government was really trying to achieve forcing it on the airlines, it's supposed to be an ID card, not a permit to fly card, to verify our identify by the Police when requested, to verify our identify when we apply for benefits.

So are we going to be forced to present this new ID card when we want to fly? Don't we have a passport for that purpose?

Another screw-up

"Having seen the cards, they carry the persons immigration status, entitlement to benefits and work status.

So when someone apples for asylum , these can change several times over a matter of months, are they going to reissue a card every single time?"

Surely the point is they have a chip with integrated flash memory, so you'd have thought the dynamic data would be written to the chip and not printed on the face of the card!

In this way, you just reprogam the chip when the data changes, not issue a new card every time...cheaper isn't it?

Not to mention that won't be enough space on the face of the card to list everyone's entitlements, ( so an immigrant will have their indefinite leave to remain on the card, now what if you're a single parent immigrant on benefits - so "indefinite leave to remain", "housing benefit code A1", "Income Support Benefit, code IS1", "Free Prescriptions, NHS Code FS1"...."

so they'll just have to limit it to a subset on the face. The whole point of this is to use a card reader to access data in the chip making it much harder to copy and forge the card.

Or the supplier of a benefit or service keys in the unique number on the face of the card and a database look-up occurs.

You don't duplicate the information in the chip with that on the face..because then you run in to problems of keeping both sets of data up to date! Or in the case of the Passport RFID chip, they duplicate the data in the chip in hard copy print in the passport, making the chip easier to copy and it's been hacked because of that flaw.

How is it, that just about every IT project this useless f**king government gets involved in it manages to screw up?

Cost of the card

I had to replace my drivers license because it was nicked. Cost of replacement? £17.

Cost of applying for a passport, around £90.

Massive difference, now I know the re-issue of the driver's license was a simpler task: they already had the information on me, just had to re-print the card, but the new passport, was a replacement for an expired one..so they already had the info on me for that, but admittedly I had to supply new photos. Ok, waffling on there a bit, but why the f**k does a passport cost so much more?

So, how much is the new ID card going to cost us? It's not just the card, it's the processing of the information to request one in the first place. And, you know full well the f***ng ba**stards will impose a law that says it's our responsibility to keep the card-up to-date and request, and pay for new issues of the card, simply to update the printed information on the face!

This is going to be incredibly expensive for us citizens.

And to partially answer my own question, why does the passport cost so much more?

Because there was a massive fiasco years ago with the installation of a new IT system which didn't work...( usual government screw-up on IT projects) and they increased the cost of the passport application to cover the cost of the screw-up.

Apparantly one of my distant relatives was responsible for the screw up.

@Stands to reason

think of the children

Tree, wrong

The reason they dare not scrap the cards is because the EU has told them we must have them. Not as draconian as the scheme ZAnulabour wants, true. Our politicians are little more than parish counselors now, carrying out Brussels requirements.

They (and the mainstream media) are SCARED to admit that they have to do this under the EU laws they have signed up to. And I'm waiting for someone here to whine (a) if you've nothing to hide..." or (b) "We've had them in Spain for years and ..."

Because you don't KNOW what will become a crime, and what the home secretary can make one retrospectively. Buying glue without an ID perhaps. Wouldn't surprise me. It's a crime now to overfill your (EU requirement) wheelie bin and

Because it never ever was a CARD, it was always about a massive Stasi type population database that YOU have to pay to maintain up to date, or get fined for NOT keeping it up to date.

@Dodgy Goings on at ThiefRow

I hope you're taking the proverbial 'cause otherwise you should just get back to reading the Sun

As the items which provide the airline with ID about someone and proof that they're allowed to work are the same as those that'll be used to collect the info for the ID card, what'll be the point?

Any illegals will get their beautifully crafted fake credentials out again and then have a government sanctioned one.

And would people who say that it'll prevent crime all put their crayons down and go and have a nap until sense prevails. Unless a burglar/mugger/murderer drops/gives you their card, it is impossible for an ID card to help solve crime.

Unrelated budgetary question

In the proposed budget for getting the ID card finished, is there money allocated for the card/fingerprint/iris readers that will be needed for every relevant office/shop/entryway? And if all that the card ever gets is a visual inspection, the biometric gumph (and I'lda thunk the chip itself) isn't needed anyway

Re Dodgy Goings on at ThiefRow....

Basically my objection is not that ID cards per say are a bad thing, Like you say they are widly used with good effect accross europe. My problem is with this government and it trying to do it.

It WILL cost a lot more than they are saying, and they are saying its going to cost a lot. A lot more than germanys has i bet,

They WILL lose the data. They will you know they will, they know they will, a dog on the otherside of the planet knows.

And above all they dont have a good reason, and they keep changing the reason. Trying to find some good reason for it. If there isnt a good reason dont do it, spend the money paying off the national debt set to hit £90 billion. Or on education or health.

Tomb stone becuase thats what this scheme needs, now wheres that plane i want to emegrate, whats new zealand like this time of year?

The 'I have nothing to hide' is such a fallacy

Why oh why do people keep trotting out this bull? Its because of this miopic mindset that our civil liberies and freedoms are being so easily eroded.

At surface level the phase is true: I have done nothing wrong so I have nothing to fear from the authorities. But that is where it stops.

If stopped, you cannot simply respond when questioned, 'no officer, I am innocent, good day' - they simply wont believe you. Instead you will have to stop and answer a number of questions, who are you?, where are you going?, whats in the bag?, etc. You will be treated as if you are a criminal until you can prove you are not. Do you really want that on the way to a job interview or when running late for that important client meeting?

And where is the line drawn? Would be happy to interrupt a family dinner, when the PRS police come knocking and asking to inspect your computer for illegal downloads?

Innocence and liberty are not the same:

Liberty: freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.

Inncoence: freedom from sin or moral wrong.

Yes, pursue and punish the wrongdoers, but do not do it by treating the innocent as criminals - that will only incite them to act as criminals.

TUC not just against

What time is it Mr Wolf?

I posted this elsewhere but it seems particularly appropriate for this story.

How do you think Britain has ended up being the most surveilled society on the planet?

Inch by inch, step by step, all the time saying 'This will make us better at catching the bad guys.'

What time is it Mr Wolf?

'It's time for me to introduce one more database to make sure you and the kiddies are safe from the bad people.'

What time is it Mr Wolf?

'It's time that we shared all that info with all those approved authorities that might want to see it.'

What time is it Mr Wolf?

'It's time to make sure that we know who everyone is so we can tell if you're a bad person.'

What time is it Mr Wolf?

'It's time for you to STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!'

..........

Look around, just exactly how much better is this country than anywhere else? How much worse? I'm trying to avoid descending into some kind of paranoid rant here but if the problem is crime and we're told that the solution is surveillance (cameras, dna databases, id cards etc), seeing that we have more of that now than ever in history shouldn't we expect a significantly lower rate of crime?

And I'm not talking about the single digit percentage figures that every government likes to suck it's own dick over, I'm talking 10%, 20%, 50%. Obviously surveillance isn't doing that.

(As an aside, I do know that there are probably thousands of examples where CCTV has been a positive influence.)

Which leaves us with another question. If surveillance is the solution but crime isn't the problem it's solving - then why is it there?

Not with this goevernment

Having been in the army since I was 15 and having carried some form of ID card all of my life. I was in favour of ID cards when the idea was first mooted.

However the ID scheme trying to be implemented here goes far beyond proving ones Identity, It is proof of your entitlement to live and work in this country. Whilst there may be nothing wrong with this concept, it's how this data is kept, who has access and how it may be used in the future, that gives me the greatest concern.

Whilst it is extremely unlikely that the likes of the National Front or other extreme regimes (present government excepted) will gain power in this fair country of ours, it is not beyond the realms of possibility. The fact that all this data is kept in one big database, and this government's record for data security worries me quite a bit.

Here is an excerpt from an email I've just received:

"NO2ID's national co-ordinator Phil Booth was unable to get into a Labour

Party conference fringe meeting this week because he couldn't get an ID

card! Phil was due to debate the ID scheme with Home Office minister Meg

Hillier but Labour's pass office in Manchester told him there had been a

problem with his application and it would cost him £600 for a temporary

pass to enter the conference for an hour! If this is how they organise

ID for their own party conference it makes you wonder how the are they

Re: Dodgy Goings on at ThiefRow....

Ha ha ha ha .... good joke.

If you haven't done anything wrong you haven't got anything to hide eh? Have you seen the backbone employed by this bunch of idiots in NuLabour? No, didn't think so, no one else has either. What happens when they pass bad law that impacts you in your daily life? Then you'll have something to hide.

We have councils employing agents to go through peoples bins searching for incorrectly filed rubbish. How long before this information is tied to your ID card. Then to your ability to gain access to government services.

"Emergency Services. What service do you require?"

"Ambulance"

"ID card number"

"10107"

"Sorry our records show two cases of incorrectly filed refuse in the last year. You will not qualify for service until March"

Its extreme but these cards will be used to build up a database of information about you that you will not have access to. They will then be used to determine your qualification for services. If you are refused you will have no avenue to find out why. The concept of an ID card isn't a bad one, the concept of this ID card is hideous.

@'Not with this governemt'

I would add to your comments that it isn't likely that we'd even recognise an 'extreme' regime when it came. Remember these things don't happen over night, we'll not wake up tomorrow having our doors kicked in by grey suited 'thought police' (well most of us won't anyway). It will be a feeling, a sensation that makes you look up one day and think to yourself 'Where is this place? How did I agree to this?'

The extreme regime of which you talk will wear a nice suit, have a slick advertising campaign, will appeal to most of people's own beliefs and will come into power in a way no different to that of any other political animal either here or in Disneyland.

It is only those that continue to question that will remain awake enough to see it coming.

I'm talking about a lot of you, Reg Readers, and of course our pal El Reg.